THE RESEARCH:

Natural Outsiders: Reframing Otherness Within a Practice of Contemporary Portraiture.

• How can a practice of portraiture rupture representations of normative identities?

• What changes when people reject given identities and with autonomy create their own?

• How does the notion of a ‘natural’ identity contribute to a sense of Otherness (Bauman, 1991)?

The following images are ordered as most recent first and document McGinnes’ practical PhD research since 2021. They betray how she felt becoming a spectacle in her recently acquired disabled identity, mirrored by her discomfort at being the subject of self-portraiture and her choice to return the gaze back upon the voyeur. Notions of disgust, a medicalised identity, the duality of possessing internal and external selves and Lacanian theory in relation to the gaze pepper these images. McGinnes is searching for a new method of approach to the concept of indentity; one in which we expect to be in flux, and in which we can see we have some choice. McGinnes hopes others who encounter this work shall possess newfound resilience upon experiencing their own identity rupture.